Photo by Cameron Venti on Unsplash.
Massachusetts's House Bill 607, sponsored by Kenneth I. Gordon (D-District 21), would, if enacted, require that the state's science standards "include only peer-reviewed and age-appropriate subject matter," where "peer-reviewed subject matter" is defined as "conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods." Introduced on May 29, 2021, the bill was heard in the Joint Committee on Education on September 13, 2021.
In 2019, Gordon introduced the identical House Bill 471. During a July 9, 2019, hearing in the Joint Committee on Education, as NCSE previously reported, Gordon explained that HB 471 would keep climate change denial out of the science classroom, and a science journalist testifying in favor of the bill cited the threat of other types of "science denialism" as reasons to pass the bill. In the event, the bill was later referred for further study.
